PCFIX: Dealing with Torrent applications

Dealing with Torrent applications

How do I stop the Torrent applications installed on my computer from running in the background while online? J.B

Answer:

Hi J.B, when you install a software, especially download managers, they have an option that you can choose to reject and it installs the software with an entry in the start up folder. This means that the software will automatically start up as soon as your computer boots up.

This is made so that your downloads could continue with as little interference from you as possible. If you are on a data plan however, this can be counter-productive.

What you can do is to download the diagnostic software called CCleaner from softpedia.com. It will allow you safely disable start up items without disabling critical start up items needed by your operating system software.

There is a native utility called MSCONFIG that comes with your operating system software, however, if you are not familiar with its usage, you may read about it on the Internet or simply ignore it.

If you are on a computer running Windows Vista or 7, you can click the start button and simply type MSCONFIG, the utility will come up and you can press ENTER on the keyboard.

For Windows XP users, when you click start, you will have to click on RUN, then type MSCONFIG and then press ENTER for the utility to show up. In the dialog box that shows up, you should click on the Start up tab, and you will see a long list (depending on how much software you have installed on your computer) of items.

You should be extra careful which item you disable, because your computer can become unstable if you uncheck the wrong ones.

I don’t have recovery partition, but want to format my laptop

I need to format my computer but I found that I don’t have the recovery partition, what can I do? M.A

Answer:

Hi M.A, it is worthy of note that formatting your computer should be the last resort, and before your get to that, there are various solutions available to salvage your computer and return to its original factory working order.

If however, you insist on formatting, you should know that without your recovery partition, you will have to get someone with the same model of your computer and with the recovery partition still intact, you can then copy their recovery partition and use it to restore your computer to its original factory settings.

If none of the above is feasible, you should be prepared to get the same version of the operating system software that shipped with your computer and you can make use of the product key that is on a label underneath your computer. That is a sure way to avoid encountering the non-genuine software message that is sure to pop-up when you update your computer.

One last thing, apart from backing up all your important data (documents, music, videos, photos, bookmarks and downloads), you should also strongly consider backing up the drivers on your computer. These are very tiny software that help your computer hardware and software work seamlessly including peripherals.

The software – Driver Genius is one of such software that backs up all the drivers on your computer and will allow you to save as an executable (.exe) file, or a zip archive.

After formatting your computer and re-installation of a new operating system software, your computer will require appropriate drivers to function effectively with all your additional hardware.

Then, you can restore the drivers you backed up earlier, with the option to choose which of the drivers you would like to restore.

Alternatively, you can choose to install free operating system software, out of the hundreds available, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, and OpenSUSE are the most common. They are typically between 680MB – 4GB in size, so you can take note before you start the download process.

The Linux operating system is not very different from the conventional and most popular ones. So, you will not have to start learning how to use it all over again.

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